Damage, Wounds, and Healing
Taking Damage About * Typically, the bigger and more resilient your character, the more punishment he can endure before he goes down for the count. The average person is 5 Size and has 2 Stamina, for a total of 7 Health. The dots are filed in from left to right, one for each Health that your character has. The squares shown are used to gauge his current condition or Health points. Marking Health * The injuries that your character suffers are recorded on your character sheet by filling in the squares of his Health chart. Bashing wounds are marked with a “/,” lethal wounds are marked with an “X,” and aggravated wounds are marked with an “*” (or *Asterisk*) As injuries of different severity are suffered, lesser wounds shift right. Damage exceeding you health of any type is rolled back to upgrade previous damage by one level. Incapacitation * Anytime all of a character’s Health boxes are marked, regardless of damage suffered, and he has a bashing slash remaining in his rightmost box, a reflexive Stamina roll is made each turn for him to remain conscious. This roll does not suffer your character’s -3 wound penalty. It’s made at the beginning of your character’s action each turn. So, if your character’s last Health box is filled with a bashing slash, you must make a Stamina roll when he acts next, whether in this turn or the next Bleeding Out * A mortal being who has lethal marks in all of his Health boxes is utterly overwhelmed and dying. Maybe they're bleeding internally, their lungs are punctured and they can’t breathe, or they've has suffered burns over most of their body— whatever is appropriate for the kinds of injuries sustained. Each minute there after in which your character receives no medical attention—mundane or supernatural — they suffer one more injury. Healing Wounds Bleeding Out * In order to stop a character from bleeding out the successes required on a + Medicine roll is one per Health point of damage suffered; each roll represents one minute of first aid work. After a character is in stable condition, and out of combat they can begin long-term hospital treatment. Long-Term Treatment * Round-the-clock, intensive care diminishes a patient’s injuries, downgrading the nature of wounds by one degree. Such treatment can occur only in a hospital or other intensive-care facility. An extended + Medicine roll is made. The number of successes required is five for a lethal wound and 10 for an aggravated one. Each roll requires an hour. This kind of treatment always focuses on the worst of the patient’s injuries first. Thus, an aggravated wound is downgraded to lethal before a lethal wound is downgraded to bashing. No more than one wound can be downgraded per day of treatment. Healing Rate * Wounds recover at the following rates: ** Bashing: One point is regained in 15 minutes. ** Lethal: One point is regained in two days. ** Aggravated: One point is regained in a week Types of Damage Deprivation * Denied proper food and water for an extended period, a mortal being suffers. Your character can go a number of days equal to his Stamina before being inhibited by lack of water. Once that threshold is exceeded, he suffers one point of bashing damage for each day that passes, and is unable to heal until re-hydrated. He can go without food for a number of days equal to his Stamina + Resolve. After that point, he suffers another point of bashing damage a day. Denied both food and water, he suffers two bashing wounds a day. * Without food and/or water over an extended period, your character becomes susceptible to disease. Any rolls made to resist disease suffer normal wound penalties when your character’s Health falls to 3 or lower. The Storyteller might also call for rolls to fight off disease where he would not have done so when your character was healthy and immune. Disease * Moral issues could arise as characters face unwitting disease carriers, or they deal with the infection of a friend, family member or ally. Characters with appropriate training can research antidotes and cures for diseases. Perhaps the “disease”that drives people to drink blood or that keeps their bodies alive after natural death can be undone. Although finding a cure for HIV should not occur within the framework of your game, an + Medicine roll can allow your character to detect the presence of HIV, hepatitis or other diseases, assuming he has access to the appropriate equipment and a sample of a subject’s blood. Developing a cure can take hours, days or years. Developing an antidote is an extended action + Medicine, with a goal of 20 or more successes depending on the elusiveness of the ailment. * If your character suffers from a disease, she may take damage over time based on her rate of decline, on her Attributes or on the nature of the illness. The Storyteller determines how often your character must face damage from the disease — every hour, day or week. Each period typically imposes a number of Health points of damage that are suffered automatically. + Resolve might be rolled to resist harm from illness in a contested action. A number of successes must be achieved in excess of the damage incurred per period. If insufficient successes are rolled, the full damage for that period is suffered. Damage from illness can be treated as bashing or lethal (or aggravated if the ailment is supernatural in origin). The effects of the ailment might also pose penalties to Stamina + Resolve rolls — say from -1 for a cold to -3 for tuberculosis. These penalties might apply to all other dice pools as well. Or, the Storyteller could decide that symptoms can be ignored until damage suffered from illness reduces your character to three or fewer Health points, and wound penalties are imposed. It might also be impossible to heal damage from illness until the disease itself is overcome. Beating an illness can involve extended or even extended and contested + Resolve rolls. Drugs * Alcohol: Subtract one die from any Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wits-based dice pools for every drink your character consumes in excess of his Stamina in an hour. (Defense is also reduced accordingly.) Meanwhile, Social rolls can gain a +1 bonus per drink (maximum +3). If your character is a mean drunk, turn this modifier into a Social penalty. These effects fade at the rate of one die per hour until all the alcohol is purged from your character’s system. * Marijuana: Lose one die from any Dexterity, Intelligence, Resolve and Wits-based dice pools for every hit your character takes from a joint or bong within an hour. (Defense is also reduced accordingly.) This effect fades completely an hour after the last toke, unless your character continues to “medicate” himself. * Hallucinogens: All dice pools lose one to three dice and traits such as Defense lose one to three points depending on the strength of the hallucinogen. Your character may experience confusing, frightening or enraging hallucinations, although he may manage to realize that they exist only in his drugged mind with a + Streetwise of Empathy roll with an appropriate penalty] after which + Resolve rolls can be made to resist the effects. The effects of hallucinogens persist for (8 minus Stamina) hours. * Cocaine/crack/speed: Your character may gain a bonus die in Strength or Stamina-based rolls, although he may also become edgy and paranoid (-1 to Social rolls). The Storyteller bases the effects of the drug on the volume that your character takes, on how pure it is and on your character’s state of mind. * Heroin/morphine/barbiturates: Pain subsides (wound penalties are ignored), but your character enters a dreamy state for (8 minus Stamina) hours. All dice pools and Resistance traits such as Defense are reduced by two during that time. Electrocution * Electrocution automatically causes bashing damage per turn of exposure. No attack roll is made. If harm from electricity is more than just instantaneous — there’s a constant flow such as through power cables — a victim may not be able to escape. His muscles contract, which can prevent him from pulling away. Roll Strength @Pass/Fail Difficulty as a reflexive action in each turn of contact. Failure means your character is still connected to the source and suffers its damage each turn until a successful roll is made. * Source Damage: ** Minor: Wall socket: 4B ** Major: Protective fence: 6B ** Severe: Junction box: 8B ** Fatal: Main line feed/subway rail: 10B Explosives and Area-of-Affect * A grenade or bomb has a Blast Area and Damage rating as indicated on the Weapons: Explosives Chart. Blast Area is the diameter in yards in which the explosion takes effect.Anyone in that area suffers the listed Damage automatically. The same number of dice is also rolled, with any successes being added to the total damage done. So, an explosive with a Damage of 4 inflicts four Health points automatically, and four dice are rolled. Each success adds another point of damage to the total. * Damage can be bashing or lethal, depending on the item used. (Someone who jumps on an explosive to save others nearby might be the only one to suffer harm, but he could take aggravated damage. An ordinary person might muffle a grenade this way, but larger explosives cannot be smothered.) * As with most Firearms combat, a target’s Defense is useless against explosives. A potential target can, however, go prone as a reaction to the threat of an explosive. Doing so automatically decreases damage inflicted by two. Armor automatically protects against explosive impact and burning with its rating against gunshots. So, a flak jacket provides three points of protection. These points are automatically subtracted from the explosive’s damage, rather than subtracting from any dice pool. Thus, if your character wears a flak jacket and a bomb does four damage, your character suffers only one Health. (“Bulletproof” armor such as a kevlar vest, flak jacket or full riot gear does not downgrade damage from explosions like it does damage from Firearms attacks) * Anyone who is concealed behind a barrier or object or who is fully covered when an explosive goes off also receives automatic protection. See Combat Summary: Concealment for rules on concealment. The rating of their concealment is subtracted from the damage that the explosive inflicts. So, someone who is substantially concealed when a bomb goes off suffers much less damage than normal. Full cover needs to be penetrated by an explosion to affect anyone behind it. Falling (Good luck...) * Many Mega-Strong and flight capable Novas have had the privilege of being able to see themselves hurdle towards earth in a blaze of glory. The only difference is that one of those groups survived to do it again. In any case, barring they land on their feet, a mortal won't take damage unless they fall from a height at least equal to half their standing jump. Fatigue * Your character can push themselves beyond normal limits, but exhaustion soon impairs their abilities. Almost anyone can go without rest for 24 hours, but to continue on is challenging. For every six-hour period that your character persists beyond 24 hours, make a Stamina + Resolve roll. If it fails, he falls asleep. If the roll succeeds, your character remains alert and active. Spending one Willpower on a roll adds three dice to the effort. No more than one Willpower point can be dedicated to a single roll to remain awake. Burning the candle at both ends impairs your character’s performance. For each six-hour period in excess of 24 hours in which he foregoes sleep, his dice pools suffer a cumulative -1 penalty. He has trouble focusing and might suffer mild hallucinations. This penalty also applies to successive Stamina + Resolve rolls to remain awake. The longest a person can go without sleep is a number of days equal to the lowest of his Stamina or Resolve, at which point he passes out. Once your character does sleep, it’s for eight hours, plus one hour for each six-hour period (in excess of 24 hours) that he forced himself to remain active. Fire * Your character comes in contact with a candle or an inferno. Either way, he gets burned. Fire automatically inflicts lethal damage per turn of exposure (no attack roll is required). The larger the flame, the more harm that’s inflicted. The hotter the flame, the greater the injury. * Size of Fire Damage ** Torch: +1L ** Bonfire: +2L ** Inferno: +3L * Heat of Fire Damage ** Candle (first-degree burns) => +0L ** Torch (second-degree burns) => +1L ** Bunsen burner (third-degree burns) => +2L ** Chemical fire/molten metal => +3L * If exposure to fire persists for more than a turn, it catches anything combustible. Your character continues to take full damage, even if he escapes the original source of the flame. Depending on the accelerator involved, the size of a fire can be reduced by one point per turn. Your character might stop, drop and roll or be targeted with a hose or fire extinguisher. The Storyteller might rule that a fire goes out immediately under some circumstances (local oxygen is removed with a controlled explosion or your character is completely immersed in water). Or, a fire could continue to burn despite efforts to put it out, such as with a grease fire when water is poured on it. * Most armor can block its rating in fire damage automatically for a number of turns equal to the gear’s rating. Damage that exceeds armor rating in that period is transferred directly to your character. Once exposure exceeds armor’s rating in turns, all fire damage is inflicted directly to your character. * Characters who are reduced to zero Health by fire but who still manage to survive (through first aid or mystical healing) might suffer a permanent impairment (reduced Physical Attribute), nerve damage (reduced Mental Attribute) or severe and disfiguring scars (reduced Presence), at the Storyteller’s discretion. Such impairment can be defined as a Flaws gained during play. Poisons and Toxins * While some poisons or toxins might affect behavior and awareness as drugs do, most simply inflict lethal damage. These substances threaten a character’s very existence. Indeed, drugs can do so too when overdosed. Poisons, toxins and drug overdoses must be delivered to a victim by a required means: injection, ingestion, inhalation or touch. * Injection: The substance is introduced directly into the bloodstream, by a needle or through injury such as by a sword coated with venom. At least one success is required on an attack roll to deliver the injection on a resisting target. Unless the poison is designed to damage or destroy the blood itself, vampires are probably immune. * Ingestion: The poison is administered in food or drink; these substances usually take longer to activate than others (say, an hour as opposed to immediate effects). Vampires are immune to most ingested poisons. * Inhalation: The poison is breathed in as a gas. Vampires are immune to most inhaled poisons. * Touch: Mere skin contact is all that’s required to activate the poison. A touch is often sufficient to deliver the toxin, and a target’s armor may apply as a penalty to the roll. * Once delivered, the poison automatically deals damage (usually lethal, but a knockout gas could cause bashing) equal to its toxicity level. Some substances inflict damage only once. Others might inflict it for a number of turns or once per hour until purged or until the effect runs its course. It could be possible to resist the effects of such substances by rolling + Resolve in a reflexive and contested action. If more successes are rolled than damage is inflicted by the toxin, damage is ignored completely. If damage is equal to higher than success rolled, all damage is delivered as normal. Such a contested roll might occur once or in each period in which a toxin causes harm. Poison/Toxin * Ammonia: Toxicity 3 * Bleach: Toxicity 4 * Cyanide: Toxicity 7 * Drug/Alcohol Abuse: Toxicity 3 to 7 * Salmonella: Toxicity 2 * Venom: Toxicity 3 to 8 Temperature Extremes * Extreme heat or cold has an adverse effect on your character. It may impose penalties on Dexterity and/or Strength-based rolls, or even affect his mental acuity by penalizing rolls involving Wits. (Defense might be reduced, too.) Penalties could be a cumulative -1 per hour of exposure. If dice pools are reduced to zero as a result of exposure, your character is physically exhausted and immobilized, or delusional. An Attribute point could even be lost permanently for prolonged exposure. Frostbite, hypothermia and heat exhaustion have dire consequences. The Storyteller can also represent extreme weather conditions through the accumulation of damage. Such damage may be resisted for a number of hours equal to your character’s + Resolve. Every hour after that inflicts a point of bashing damage that can’t be healed until your character is no longer exposed to the extreme condition.